OTTAWA, Aug. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Canada has seen more doctors returning than leaving for the first time in 30 years, a report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows.

The report, released Wednesday, says that between 2000 and 2004,the number of physicians leaving Canada declined by 38 percent.

In 2004, 317 physicians returned to Canada and 262 left. That was a drop from 2000, when 420 doctors left the country and a significant decrease from the peak of 771 physicians who moved abroad in 1994.

"The new data reflect a continuation in the trend we have seen since the mid-1990s of a decreasing number of doctors leaving Canada for opportunities in other countries," Steve Slade, consultant on physician databases at CIHI, said in a release.

The other notable trend is that Canada's total number of doctors has kept pace with population growth since the late 1990s.

Between 2000 and 2004, the number of doctors across the countryrose by 5 percent to 60,612 in 2004 from 57,803 in 2000. During the period from 2000 to 2004, Canada's population also grew and, as a result, the number of doctors per 100,000 population has remained fairly stable - 188 in 2000 and 189 in 2004.

The report also found that Canada's physician workforce is increasingly female. CIHI's latest statistics show that the numberof female physicians increased by 14 percent in the last five years ,from 16,945 in 2000 to 19,365 in 2004.

In contrast, the number of male physicians increased only slightly (0.6 percent), from 40,841 in 2000 to 41,071 in 2004. In 2004, women accounted for almost one-third (32 percent) of the total supply of physicians, representing a 10 percent increase since 2000. Enditem